It always comes down to we don’t build houses fast enough. Why?
Because making even more people to nowhere to live is a popular no-brainer.
Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
21–30 of 202 posts
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#22Hug of death?
Other content works though: https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#23IMO... one of the most important benchmarks for judging the effectiveness of a government is the cost of housing. Cheap and basic housing is so key for economic well-being. I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level to try to overcome the current situation. Like persistently have a department of government just building to meet needed demands in economic centers. What oth…
Governments caused this problem by fighting tooth and nail to keep immigration levels high. Without that, house prices in most developed countries would be falling now, like they are in Japan, because a decreasing population means less demand for housing.
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#24IMO... one of the most important benchmarks for judging the effectiveness of a government is the cost of housing. Cheap and basic housing is so key for economic well-being. I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level to try to overcome the current situation. Like persistently have a department of government just building to meet needed demands in economic centers. What oth…
Governments caused this problem by fighting tooth and nail to keep immigration levels high. Without that, house prices in most developed countries would be falling now, like they are in Japan, because a decreasing population means less demand for housing.
Cure worse than the disease. A aging population is economically ruinous.
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#25IMO... one of the most important benchmarks for judging the effectiveness of a government is the cost of housing. Cheap and basic housing is so key for economic well-being. I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level to try to overcome the current situation. Like persistently have a department of government just building to meet needed demands in economic centers. What oth…
Singapore's HDB system is world class in this regard. Key items being first time owners are highly prioritized (effectively no one else). Must be owner occupied for first 5 years before allowing rental or resale. Government sets initial sale pricing to be quite affordable with special loans being cheap for the BTO. Average 2 year wait from lottery to build. Was 5 during covid.
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#26IMO... one of the most important benchmarks for judging the effectiveness of a government is the cost of housing. Cheap and basic housing is so key for economic well-being. I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level to try to overcome the current situation. Like persistently have a department of government just building to meet needed demands in economic centers. What oth…
>I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level
As someone living in a country where it can take five or more years to get approval to build a new house and 10+ for commercial buildings due to the government bureaucracy, I'm scared by the idea of getting the government more involved. The key issue is that the government makes it very hard to build -> less housing -> expensive housing.
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#27Over the last 50-70 years the UK made the choice to stop building social housing and to sell off the existing stock with aggressive government subsidies. Complaining now is a bit like complaining there's no milk after you sold the dairy farm to build a casino. I read TFA but I'm not seeing anything but useless outrage that would have been better placed 20-30 years ago I became a first time property owner at 36 and it…
> If houses ever return to good affordability I'm screwed.
Uhh, why? Unless you were planning on selling up and spending it all on a cruise or something house prices are immaterial to home owners.
> I have to refinance every 5 years, because that's the game in the UK, so if rates spike I'm also screwed.
This is the real problem. It's partly our fault, of course, for agreeing to a mortgage which we couldn't afford if the interest rates doubled. You know exactly what you're signing up to, but you still do it.
The trouble is there's no choice. The finance industry has us by the balls. I don't even think of it as a housing crisis, I think of it as finance crisis. The real problem is banks control far too much of our lives. The entire money supply is essentially just mortgages. This abstraction we call money has been taken way too far.
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#28Over the last 50-70 years the UK made the choice to stop building social housing and to sell off the existing stock with aggressive government subsidies. Complaining now is a bit like complaining there's no milk after you sold the dairy farm to build a casino. I read TFA but I'm not seeing anything but useless outrage that would have been better placed 20-30 years ago I became a first time property owner at 36 and it…
Its not even that, the restrictions on new homes in the UK make it impossible to build any significant amount of housing, social or not.
Be specific - what restrictions are these and how do they affect building?
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Governments caused this problem by fighting tooth and nail to keep immigration levels high. Without that, house prices in most developed countries would be falling now, like they are in Japan, because a decreasing population means less demand for housing.
Cure worse than the disease. A aging population is economically ruinous.
Compare the growth in GDP per capita in Japan Vs the UK, the UK isn't doing particularly better in spite of all that immigration.
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#30IMO... one of the most important benchmarks for judging the effectiveness of a government is the cost of housing. Cheap and basic housing is so key for economic well-being. I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level to try to overcome the current situation. Like persistently have a department of government just building to meet needed demands in economic centers. What oth…
A lot of the cheap blocks of government made apartments in the UK are now being torn down. Without regular maintenance and updating, cheap housing can quickly become ugly ghettos. It isn't enough to just build houses. They need to be initially desirable and continually maintained to remain desirable.
Even if they are built, the entire insurance system post-Grenfell is causing absolutely insane service charges for residents.
Mine are up >50% since 2018, that’s despite gaining no new services and work on the building being put on hold due to it not being essential. The fact that it’s a relatively new build (about 12 years old) is almost irrelevant as construction is shoddy.
Putting new buildings up is only part of the problem, the entire system is fucked.